


Starstuff

by Jawsforsure



Series: London is a Lady [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Cancer, F/M, Gen, London Underground, Magic Realism, dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 06:11:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jawsforsure/pseuds/Jawsforsure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's rare to see the stars in London. It has to be clear and cloudless, you have to be away from the light pollution, the moon has to have set. And you have to be outside, and you have to look up.</p><p>Three times in the year after Sherlock's death that John Watson looked up and saw the stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Starstuff

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing of Sherlock, but I like to think I have a share in London. This is a small offering of my love for her.
> 
> Title from Carl Sagan - "The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” 
> 
> Possibly triggery for cancer, I've tried to be as vague as possible, but warning just in case. Mary doesn't die...yet.

**It's rare to see the stars in London. It has to be clear and cloudless, you have to be away from the light pollution, the moon has to have set. And you have to be outside, and you have to look up.**

Tonight John is coming home from the therapist. It's the last time he'll go. Again. He started after Sherlock's death, when Harry dragged him out 221B and drove him to the practice. The therapist has prescribed rest, and more therapy, for the psychosomatic limp, and in frustration at her  _refusal to observe_ (yes, Sherlock, now I understand) he misses the bus. There'll be another one in a quarter of an hour, and it's not cold, but damnit John doesn't want to wait. Not tonight. So he sets off home. Of course, he realises that his new flat is a) in the other direction and b) much too far to walk, especially with his damn leg. So he sets off towards the nearest tube station. But he's enjoying the walking, even with the leg, and the nearest tube station is very near, so he sets off towards the nearest tube station that's on the same line as the station nearest his new flat. It's a gorgeous evening, summery and still, and he unzips his jacket and strides on. 

He's passed the hospital ( _not_ that  _hospital, thank God, a different one)_ and he's coming up to the big roundabout, which isn't a roundabout at the moment, because of course, damn roadworks. So it's a mess of roads and it's a wide open space and of course right then there's a drop of rain on his hand. Or he thinks it's a drop of rain so he looks up. And there, stretched in the sky above him, and around the darkened building in front of him and everywhere you could possibly see, is stars. Oh it's not a carpet of them, not like the Afghan mountains, nothing like, but it's  _stars_ in London. They twinkle like someone's poked holes into blackout curtains, those few specks of white light in a curtain of black, above the whirling swirling city, with the cars beeping and rushing past and ambulances with red and blue and John is staring open-mouthed. 

Of course he has to cross the road at some point, and he follows the cyclists round the corner, ignores the station to his right and continues down the wide road, buses looming in the distance, eyes fixed firmly on the sky. As he walks further on, the stars fade and disappear, because after all, too much light pollution, to be expected. But he's gone all the way down Tottenham Court Road and passed four tube stations and he's still walking, hoping for that last glimpse of star above amidst the flashing bright human crush below. And he's thinking  _would you appreciate this? You always shone brighter than the stars, when did you look at them? I know you didn't know much about them but did you ever look up and just enjoy that they were there? Did you try and leap for them?_

When he gets to the station on his line and gets on the escalator he realises that he's slowly stopped limping and he's walking tall now, one tear glittering on his cheek like a star.

* * *

 

**It's rare to see the stars in London. It has to be clear and cloudless, you have to be away from the light pollution, the moon has to have set. And you have to be outside, and you have to look up.**

His feet hurt. His face hurt. One from walking, the other from smiling. He'd finally cracked it. The Case of the Disappearing Limp. It had taken him a while, ( _longer than you would have, definitely)_ but he finally understood why the limp went away and came back and went away again, and this time it wasn't exactly adrenaline. It was so  _simple, (doubtless you'd have said even an idiot would have been able to spot it)_ so very easy to fix, and a hell of a lot easier than finding ways to increase his adrenaline. It was London. Or rather, walking in London. The days he had to walk somewhere or he walked for the fresh air and the life in his limbs meant that he could leave his cane for the next week or so. But stay in, don't go anywhere, venture for short trips, take a taxi, and be forced to limp again, clutching his cane like an old man. So now he knew. And now he could do whatever he wanted.

So he did. Tonight, he walked. And he smiled, because as he walked, he sometimes saw a flash of a black coat, or the glimpse of a pale face, and he knew it wasn't Sherlock, it couldn't be Sherlock, he was...well, it couldn't be. But it was close enough for John.

He walked, through the parks and through the streets and across the bridges and under subways and down the alleys and he walked the Tube platforms. The Tube was the best, the heart of the city, he could hear it thump thump thumping to the rhythm of the trains hurtling through the tunnels, that echoing clacking before they emerged like wild beasts onto the platforms. The warm wind that sighed through the stations, up the escalator halls, through the stairwells, was the city breathing, slowly, deeply.  _Inhale._ Piccadilly line, a train's just gone the other direction, get on at Earl's Court. Switch to Green Park, Jubilee line get off at London Bridge.  _Exhale._ Seriously bradypnoeic* in a human patient, normal in a sprawling ancient metropolis, stretching her spine out like a languid cat. He could imagine Sherlock's deduction "Of course the Tube is the heart and lungs of the city, the inner chest cavity, London's been built on top of herself for centuries! You have to dig deep into the ground to find the core, of course!" Not that he'd every be so fanciful of course, that was just John. 

He noticed one day, the day he retook his emergency medicine exams to requalify for clinical practice actually, that the Thames through London looked like an ECG* from above. Okay, a very wobbly ECG, but there was a definite resemblance. It was a photo on the wall of the room he was taking his exam in, one of those bland ubiquitous hospital photos and he looked at it and went wryly  _well that's a problem with an inverted P wave, enlarged atria.*_ And then looked down at the question he was struggling with, the patient with hypertension, palpitations and the FY1* saying they weren't sure if they had put the ECG leads on correctly and wrote down "Enlarged atria". 

He walked home grinning that night too, the scenic route, the long way through the Tube, and as he got off the train, he said "Thank you" (very quietly, there might not have been many people on the train, it was very late after all, but he didn't want to be struck off medicine for insanity when he'd just been let back in). And the train rushed past on ribs of steel and the heartbeat of the city continued round the corner and John looked up through the roofs of the platforms and there in the small space of sky in-between were three small stars. And the light reflecting in John's teeth may not have been starlight, but even Sherlock Holmes would have been hard pressed to tell the difference.

* * *

 

**It's rare to see the stars in London. It has to be clear and cloudless, you have to be away from the light pollution, the moon has to have set. And you have to be outside, and you have to look up.**

Tonight John's walking to the only nearby supermarket open on a Sunday evening, because he forgot to get milk before his shift at the hospital this morning and if he doesn't get his tea (with milk) before tomorrow's shift, well. So he's walking ten minutes to the little corner shop across the bridge that his Triage Nurse ( _Lucy? Laura? Lilly?)_ outright  _swore_ would have milk at nine-thirty on a Sunday night. And yes it's an emergency. Tea is always an emergency. 

He's been working at the A&E for a while now, or it feels like a while. It's just what he expected, the run of broken arms and drunks and small children with Lego up their nose and flu. It's not gunshots and sunstroke but it's not far off, there's the same feeling of "All of us together in the trenches" and late nights with too much coffee and black humour that's the same wherever you get people who battle against illness and disease and death. And the shifts are long enough to fill the empty days, and by the end of the day he's usually just tired enough to watch Dr Who and slip off to sleep without the sleeping pills. 

And on the good days he can feel like he and his team have saved someone's life, or their ability to walk, or their sight (or in one near case, a doctor's career). On the bad days it feels like they haven't saved anyone, and in every failure John sees a pale face with blood-slicked curls, black coat fanning out like a shroud. 

These days end with long staring matches with the bottle of single malt. But surprisingly, not the gun. Not since Sherlock.

And he hasn't been staring at the bottle the last few weeks. Not since Mary.

Mary.

Mary turned up one Friday ( _after lunch)_ ) with a small boy ( _Jamie, one of her students_ ) who'd had an allergic reaction ( _to some peanuts in a classmate's lunchbox_ ). Mary, used to the small emergencies of a primary school teacher, had briskly stabbed him with an epipen and danger had been averted, but she'd brought him to A&E just to be sure. Jamie had left with a clean bill of health and a lolly, and Mary had left with an invitation to drinks that night.

She was lovely, auburn hair falling in loose curls and delicate crowsfeet around her bright eyes. She laughed loudly and had one crooked tooth and she drank strong cocktails and good whiskey. She loved her small Dachshund and was divorced, no children, no plans to. ( _Later on, John would look back to this moment and notice her half smile, that secret joke, at his question. There would be no children_ ). 

They met up again on Sunday and walked across the river, Yogi yapping at their feet and had lunch at one of the overpriced riverfront pubs. They met up several times more, John enchanted with her, until they ended up one Thursday night at Mary's flat. Buttons undone and shoes toed off without their pairs, he was panting against her neck and mouthing down her collarbone when she said it.

"I'm dying, John."

Three-Continents-Watson nearly said "For a shag, love? Happy to oblige"

Captain Watson, Northumberland Fusiliers nearly said "Are you hit? Where's the bleed?!"

Dr John Watson, trained at Barts, nearly said "Now there, what seems to be the problem? We'll do everything we can"

But John of John-and-Sherlock, assistant to the only consulting detective in the world,thought  _grey tinge to skin, not simply overtired and product of Northern Europe on Caucasian skin. Auburn hair doesn't match lightly tanned skin tone, eyebrows don't quite match despite being very carefully dyed, eyebrows very sparse under dye. Sensible shoes, very comfortable, teacher's shoes, yet unworn, wears wrinkle free skirts, spends most of day sitting, too tired to stand all day. Prominent collarbones when exposed, usually wears many layers to maintain body heat._

And he said "I know, cancer."

The facts. Terminal. Less than a year. She was planning on staying at her job for the rest of the year, she just hoped she’d be able to continue that long. Chemotherapy in the school holidays, strictly palliative. Her fiancé had been “unable to deal with the strain” when it had returned, she’d been going it alone the last two years.

Mary was brave, face set and emotionless, but John (- _and-Sherlock_ ) could hear the unsteadiness in her voice. She was human, and she understood why anyone would not want to be with a dying woman, but she hoped, oh she hoped John was different.

He wasn’t. ( _I’m not extraordinary like you, I’m just one of the little people.)_

He couldn’t deal with the thought of losing someone so close to him again, in such a short space of time. That was the truth and that’s what he told her, right before she sighed in acceptance and asked him politely but firmly to “leave her flat, don’t call, don’t see me again, thank you but no”. So he left.

That was three days ago and although they’d spent longer apart John felt like he hadn’t seen her forever. The texts that she would send, silly, inconsequential and rambling, but always perfectly punctuated and signed with two kisses. “Why two?” He’d asked their second date, and she’d just laughed and shrugged. “Mysterious woman” he’d teased and she’d looked him dead in the eye with a smile that sent warmth coiling down his spine, “Got it in one”.

John itched to call her, it was all the difference between surviving and starting to live again. It was having someone to make tea for, someone whose jokes you laughed at, and to be fair the little Captain had been taking a great deal of interest in Mary.

But how could he cope with her slow, gradual, ravaging death? Sherlock’s had ripped him apart, would Mary’s be the one that made him crumble? It was inevitable as a body falling of a building, and John would be the one on the pavement with skinned knees again.

He’s three quarters of the way across the bridge, iron and steel limbs spanning the dark Thames. The traffic across the bridge is a dull roar to his left, the quiet river unspooling to the sea on his right, and then there’s a noise like a whisper of trees. A rowing boat, flying under the bridge in silence, but for the susurration of oars flying across the surface of the water. One small light, like a fallen star, flying out, and then four more boats follow, all that perfect quiet but the hush-hush-hush of eight people in perfect harmony, speeding them down the Thames. John’s struck by how fast they are, like low flying planes or shooting stars streaking down the sky, and he pauses to watch them fan out past the bridge and start to disappear round the bend. Above him the sky’s inky-black, peppered with stars like the lights on the boats, and they’re even reflected in the smooth surface of the river, the cold beauty of the sky and the deep black water.

And all John wants is Mary here, to show this brief snapshot of something so beautiful and so mundane.

In a shooting star of clarity, one hush-hush-hush whisper in his ear, he knows that’s what he wants. The beautiful everyday of living with Mary and the everyday beautiful of Mary, the excitement of her and the drudgery of her illness. He wants to hold her up in the starlight even though he knows their journey will end with her in the dark silent earth.

He runs to her door, and she even surprises herself by opening it.

“Marry me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Medical Terms
> 
> *bradypnoeic - slow breathing
> 
> *ECG - electrocardiogram, the reading of the electrical signals your heart sends out, the wiggly line on the heart monitor that goes flat when people die in medical programs.
> 
> *inverted P wave...enlarged atria - this is medically correct, I'm such a geek.
> 
> *FY1 - foundation year 1 doctor, a first year doctor, newly qualified from medical school, usually about 24.


End file.
